


Keep Your Faith (In Me)

by authoressjean



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dean Winchester is Sam Winchester's Parent, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally Hurt Sam Winchester, Episode: s15e09 The Trap, Gen, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Loss of Faith, Protective Dean Winchester, Religion, Sam's loss of hope, Season/Series 15, Season/Series 15 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:40:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24006742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/authoressjean/pseuds/authoressjean
Summary: "The week following Chuck’s departure, Sam was sort of…crazy."Hope isn't the only thing Sam's lost. Dean's determined to help him keep his faith, even if he doesn't believe it himself.Maybe there's still something to keep faith in. Like a big brother who never gives up. Or a little brother who's worth praying for.
Relationships: Castiel & Dean Winchester, Castiel & Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 20
Kudos: 133





	Keep Your Faith (In Me)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [K_Hanna_Korossy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/K_Hanna_Korossy/gifts).



> This is a gift for my friend, K Hanna Korossy (you might know her) regarding our discussions over season 15. Chuck has a lot to answer for and this is just one way that I'm reconciling it. Because the story works so much better when the infinite isn't so finite, like Chuck.

The week following Chuck’s departure, Sam was sort of…crazy.

Not the crazy he’d been with Lucifer rattling around in his skull, or the kind that he’d been on the demon blood, or even the bookish sort that had been him desperately trying to undo Dean’s deal. No, this was a whole different sort of crazy, and Dean wasn’t really sure what the hell to do about it.

For one thing, Sam was jumpy, and not just when someone entered a room, but all the time. He couldn’t seem to keep still, feet beating out some random rhythm that didn’t match anything, fingers drumming incessantly on any surface, limbs trembling without any hint of settling. Dean was pretty sure that if he tried to grab hold of Sam that he’d start vibrating, too.

Then there was the grinding of his teeth, the clenching of his jaw, the digging into his palms with his fingers until there were half-bleeding moons cut into his skin. Dean had tried to stop him from doing it once and Sam had jerked away from him like he had the plague. He just offered Sam a roll of gauze now, and it was enough to make him stop for a little while. Mostly. Then he’d usually switch to chewing on his knuckles, something that Dean hadn’t seen in years. At least he was chewing something that way; it wasn’t like the kid was eating anything else, no matter what Dean tempted him with.

The worst part of it was the emotional side of it. Anxiety that not only came out physically but left him wandering the halls at night and staring aimlessly at walls during the day. Anger that came out of nowhere and usually wound up with something thrown at the walls or him down at the gun range firing off magazine after magazine. If he wasn’t shouting then he wasn’t talking at all.

So…crazy. Or maybe Dean was the one going crazy, watching Sam implode and not really sure what the hell to even do about it. Anything he tried wound up quickly rebuffed and Sam even more reticent to engage. Clenched jaw, wandering the halls, throwing books, fingers skittering, shouting at anything. Rinse, repeat.

Castiel kept giving him looks that clearly told him to fix it. And as grateful as he was that Cas was there with them and not stuck in Purgatory under Eve’s hand, or swallowed up by a new Mark to seal Chuck away, he was even more grateful that the brotherhood they’d shared, the easy friendship they’d maintained through the years, and those silent conversations they had, that was solid and stronger than ever. If Dean had known it would’ve been that easy, maybe he should’ve prayed sooner.

But when Sam finally stormed out of the kitchen, jerking past Castiel in his haste to be anywhere except where Dean was since Dean had dared to suggest eating something, Castiel finally decided to make his silent conversation a bit more audible.

“Do something,” Castiel said, and Dean threw his arms in the air.

“Like _what_? I’ve waited him out, I’ve tried talking to him, I’ve even told him the same thing I told him the night we got back!” Because the way Sam’s shoulders had dropped in surprised relief, to hear Dean so easily agree with him about not sealing Chuck away, was something that was going to sit with Dean for a while. “I told him he was right to make the call he did! I’ve made him every healthy meal I could under the sun, I’ve waited patiently, I even tried to hug him and I nearly got my head bitten off!”

“Then do something else,” Castiel insisted. “I’ve never seen him like this and…” He pursed his lips and shook his head. “I’ve spent the last few years worrying about the both of you because you’re my family and I love you, both of you. So trust me when I say that I am very worried about Sam right now. Possibly more than I have been before.”

Well, if that wasn’t enough to make Dean move, he wasn’t sure what else would. “Why?” he couldn’t help but ask. “What are your spidey-senses picking up?”

“I’m not a spider so I wouldn’t know,” Castiel said, wrinkling up his nose. “But something’s missing. Something’s _wrong_. And I don’t know what it is. I’ve tried to speak with him, tried to glean anything, but his mind is almost painful to hear, his thoughts are so jumbled and lost.”

All things Dean didn’t want to hear but needed to, because at the end of the day, this was his kid, the guy he’d raised, his best friend, his little brother. And his kid was hurting.

Screw it. He’d never backed down from digging in deep before. He’d given Sam space, he’d tried to talk with Sam, so now it was time for big brother to do what he did best: keep pushing until he figured out what was wrong.

“I’ll make coffee,” Castiel said, as if sensing Dean’s decision. Dean gave him a nod before heading down the hall. There was no sound, no anxious tapping, no growling, nothing that indicated his brother had come through or where Sam had gone, but Dean had a fairly good idea. The library wasn’t exactly the refuge it had once been, the gun range was silent, and Sam had steered clear of any of the older reference books and magic texts since he’d haltingly relayed Chuck’s hand in Eileen’s return and resurrection (and seriously, screw him because what sort of God played with people’s lives like that? What kind of God did that to his little brother, one of the best people he knew?).

That left one place that Sam still called a safe haven. And the door was ajar.

Dean cleared his throat and gently pushed the door to Sam’s room in a little. “Sam? You in there?”

Silence. The light was on, but that didn’t mean much. He pushed it open a little more and saw a boot on the floor, long legs bent from what looked like the bed. “Sam?” he called again, keeping his voice soft. Still no answer. Dean pursed his lips and opened the door completely.

His little brother sat on the edge of the bed facing the door, arms not so much resting on his knees as they were all but sprawled, like he had no energy to lift them from where they’d fallen. His head hung lower than his hunched shoulders. More than any of that, however, he was completely still, the first Dean had seen in days.

“Sammy?” he asked quietly.

When Sam raised his head, Dean stared, stunned, at the tears silently rolling down Sam’s face. Sam gave a wet huff and wiped his hand over his face, but he still said nothing. Just sat, miserably staring at the floor. No, miserable was the wrong word. Brokenhearted, maybe. The sort of brokenhearted that came from your heart being stomped on for so long that you actually felt sick at how mauled and mangled you felt. The kind of brokenhearted that left you numb inside.

Crushed. Sam looked devastated and crushed.

Slowly he moved to sit next down to his brother. Sam sat, not even tense but slumped over on himself. The manic seemed to have disappeared in an instant, a puppet with its strings cut. It made him hurt to even _look_ at his brother. Even at the worst of his depression, Sam had never looked this…this _inconsolable._

They sat there for a long minute or two, Sam sniffing every now and then, Dean desperately trying to figure out what to say. A hand on the shoulder felt useless and weak, wrong in the face of what was so much pain. And it wasn’t like he didn’t a clue what the hell the pain was about or from. In the back of his mind, Chuck’s words echoed, his self-righteous smirk wrapped around each one. _Sammy lost hope, and now I’m free. Hey, take it easy on the kid: it took a lot to beat it out of him._

Sam hadn’t been chewed on too bad by the time they’d gotten to him, but there were a lot of ways to beat someone down. And Chuck had clearly done a whopper on his brother if Sam was still a mess almost a week later.

The hand that Sam raised to wipe at his still rolling tears again trembled a little, and it matched the broken, quiet chuckle he let out. The sound cut through Dean worse than any blade in Hell, and he finally reached out to rest a hand on Sam’s back. “Sammy-“

“You don’t understand.”

Dean paused, hand just barely on Sam’s shoulder. “What?”

“You, you don’t understand.” Sam took in a shuddering breath and let out a shaky exhale. “I’ve been praying in some form or another, every day, since I was eleven. You two were late coming home from a hunt, you and Dad, and I was, I was terrified. I called Pastor Jim. He promised…” He swallowed hard. Two more tears trailed down. “He promised you were bound to be fine, and he encouraged me to pray. To, to put my trust and faith in someone who would look out for me, for you, for Dad.”

Oh. _Oh._ This was so much worse than Dean had originally thought. He opened his mouth to say something, anything, but the words wouldn’t come out.

Sam snorted. “I’ve prayed every day since then. Little prayers, big prayers, prayers asking for help, for guidance. Even after the angels showed up and said I was a monster, even after Cas couldn’t find God, even in the Cage, I prayed. I have never lost hope in something beyond me that’s holding the world together, that good w-will always prevail and evil won’t win.”

He threw his arms in the air, face twisted in anguish. “But Chuck’s the God I’ve been praying to all this time and he doesn’t give two shits. I don’t know if he ever has. There’s no good or evil with him, there’s just him and what he wants. He doesn’t care about anyone else. Just…just a good _story_. And I have no one to pray to anymore. I…I have _nothing_.”

Not just a loss of hope, a complete loss of faith. Sam’s moorings had broken and left him adrift in the middle of the worst storm Dean could’ve possibly imagined. He’d known about his brother praying – it’d been hard to swallow after the loss of Dad, harder still in the midst of the Trials – but he hadn’t realized how much Sam had leaned on that until now. Hearing how his brother had truly believed in doing the right thing because good had to triumph over the crap they saw, that it had to make a difference, only for it to not matter…

There wasn’t a damn thing Dean could do to make that right. There was no way for him to give Sam that belief back, that hope back. Hell, the only thing Dean believed in these days was that he had enough alcohol to get him through and that Cas and Sam, no matter what he did, wouldn’t leave him. That belief had been hard fought to get to, too.

The memory tugged at him, gently coaxing at him, and Sam had cried, then, too. Tears of hot anger and frustration and pain, but beneath them all, that same fervent belief he’d refused to yield. That same belief that had gotten them through a lot, that had buoyed Dean in _his_ darkest moments. Sam had carried him, carried Cas, carried all of them at some point or another with his belief.

“You asked me why I didn’t believe in us.”

Sam sniffed and said nothing, but his head turned, just slightly. “A year ago,” Dean said. “With that damn box I’d made. You asked me why I didn’t believe in us. And then you decked me, which, by the way, thanks for not pulling that punch, bitch.”

The faintest ghost of a smile pulled at Sam’s lips. “You told me you believed in us. You’ve always believed in us, Sam. Even when I couldn’t, last year with Michael, ten years ago with this world’s Michael, with the Mark, with all of it. You’ve never stopped believing in us.

“So don’t stop now. Don’t give Chuck the satisfaction. He messed up, and bad, and you’re allowed to hurt. But if you can’t believe in anything else, or have hope or faith in anything else, then believe in us. You and me. Put your faith in us. I do.”

Because at the end of the day, there wasn’t anyone else Dean wanted by his side. Cas, yes, he’d nearly lost his angelic brother recently enough to pull his head out of his ass and admit that he couldn’t lose Cas. But it was always going to boil down to Sam being the first person he’d pick in a fight, the first person he’d turn to if crap went down, the first person he’d save above his own life.

He squeezed Sam’s shoulder, and Sam raised his own hand to clasp Dean’s. The tears had slowed, from the looks of it, though a stray one slipped through. Dean chewed on the inside of his cheek but finally lent voice to the thought that kept popping in his head. “Chuck messed up a lot of things as God. But the one thing he’s gotten right, over and over again, is giving me you as a little brother. For that, I’d probably forgive him a lot of crap.”

Still nothing said, but Sam squeezed his hand tighter. Dean forced himself to stand, tousled Sam’s hair just enough to make Sam jerk his head away in mock annoyance, and headed for the door. “Dinner’s in an hour,” he said. “Go grab a shower, Sammy.”

He didn’t linger, didn’t see what Sam would do, just moved himself down the hall to the kitchen. Whatever dinner was, it needed to be done in an hour. If Sam didn’t show by then, he’d go drag him out. But he hoped he wouldn’t have to.

Castiel was at the table with a mug of what looked like tea in front of him, but there was a smell of coffee lingering in the air. “How’s Sam?” he asked.

Dean pursed his lips. “Chuck did a hell of a lot more damage than we thought.”

In an instant the angel began to rise with a heavy frown on his face. “I might not have a lot of grace left but that doesn’t mean-“

“Not like that,” Dean said, waving him off. “Just…when’s the last time you heard Sam pray?”

It didn’t take long for the implications to sink in, and Castiel sat back down with a heavy thud. “Oh,” he said quietly.

“Yeah,” Dean said, and he turned to the fridge. Screw it. “How’s a leftover casserole sound?”

Silence greeted him. He glanced over at Castiel, making a face. “Dude, they’re not that bad. I’ve got noodles and various pastas and I can always add in some sausage-“

But it wasn’t a look of vague disgust that met him. No, it was a look of almost wonder, and a soft smile that almost made Dean smile on reflex. “What?” he asked.

Castiel glanced at him and the smile turned a little sad. “I hadn’t realized how much I’d come to rely on hearing him until he stopped,” he admitted. “It’s nice to hear again.”

Oh. _Oh_. “Sam’s praying?” he asked, just to be sure.

A nod. “Not to anyone in particular. It sounds as if it’s more geared towards the universe in general. You’re right, that was what I hadn’t realized was missing. Whatever you said, Dean, it clearly meant a great deal to him.”

It was humbling, sometimes, how often that applied, how much Dean’s word was like a different sort of gospel ringing through Sam’s ears. It had caused untold damage through the years, when Dean’s mouth had opened and his own hurt had come through as anger, and there were times Dean still wasn’t sure if he could undo everything he’d said, everything he hadn’t ever really meant to say.

But sometimes, sometimes it was worth it for his paltry words to mean enough to keep Sam going. “Good,” was what he found himself saying now. “That’s…good.”

The casserole came out just as Sam came in, freshly showered, his eyes still a little red but his gaze clear. For the first time in two weeks, he wasn’t manic, and he wasn’t as despairing as he’d been in his room. Sam looked…quiet, but strong. Solid as ever. And when he met Dean’s gaze, it was with a small smile.

Dean smiled back, because how the hell could he not? His kid looked better than he had in a long time. He wondered how long the Chuck thing had been eating at him. How long he hadn’t bothered to pray.

Sam’s smile faded into a frown an instant later, and when he looked at Dean, it was with the disgust he’d expected earlier. “Seriously, Dean, if you need help in the kitchen or suggestions about what to make, just _ask_. Throwing everything together into the oven and calling it a casserole is just wrong.”

“Oh, bite me, bitch,” Dean growled, but his smile was having a harder time being contained. Sam gave a quick grin and went to grab plates.

* * *

It was two days later that Sam tentatively suggested a hunt in New Hampshire. “I think it’s a spirit,” he said. “Or a few spirits. I just want to make sure that it’s not some of the spirits that got out before we could contain them.”

Good enough for Dean. “Saddle up,” he told Cas, and headed for his room. His go bag was still clean and ready, and he threw on his coat, the thicker blue one because it _was_ December, and the northeast was cold. He needed a hat. Not that he’d ever tell Sam that, because the geek would buy him three, and one of them was bound to be obnoxiously pink with a pom-pom, because apparently ten-year-old humor didn’t get old. The memory of the then-tiny geek grinning obnoxiously after buying him the hat made him roll his eyes.

Another memory from that year suddenly cut through him, stealing his breath a little, and he glanced across the room to the drawer where the object of the memory sat. After a moment of pause, he crossed the room and pulled the drawer open. There, tucked inside a handkerchief, right where he’d left it. It had been safer there, years of it missing, and sometimes he brushed his hand over it with a fond smile.

He wondered now if Sam knew that. If Sam wondered what he’d done with it, if Sam knew how special it still was to him.

Well. He couldn’t undo words he’d said through the years, but he knew one solid way to let Sam know how much he still believed in them.

When he came out, Sam was pulling on his own coat, the brown one a twin to Dean’s navy. It’d taken a long time for Dean to be willing to buy Sam a coat that had any color remotely close to beige; even this one was more orange than brown. Too close to the one he’d died in.

“I have a coat,” Castiel was saying patiently.

“Yeah, but New Hampshire’s bound to be covered in snow, which reminds me, we might want to take tire chains with us. Dean, where did you put-“ and Sam glanced over at him, _saw_ him, and froze.

“In the garage, behind the truck,” Dean said. “Though taking the truck might be better for the weather, anyway.”

“That’s a commonly held misbelief,” Sam said absently, eyes still on Dean’s chest, where the little gold amulet hung just as it had for a long time. He finally raised his gaze to Dean’s, and Dean waited, letting Sam read him like an open book. “Worried that Chuck might show?” Sam asked quietly.

Of course his brother wouldn’t dare believe the first, most obvious conclusion. Wouldn’t hope. Not anymore. “Nope,” Dean said, letting the ‘p’ pop. “This isn’t his. It’s mine.”

Sam stared at him, mouth parting slightly in surprise. Beside him, Castiel smiled warmly in approval. “Ready?” Dean asked.

Slowly Sam nodded. “Yeah. We’re, uh, we’re ready.” The corners of his lips turned up, disbelief turning into something closer to awe. It wasn’t something Dean figured he deserved, not for just putting on his amulet, but it spoke volumes as to how much of Sam’s faith had been badly bruised and battered. How much Chuck had truly killed his hope.

It wasn’t going to stay that way. Not if Dean had anything to say about it.

“Then let’s go,” he said, and they headed for the garage.

* * *

Of course nothing ever kept going Dean’s way because why would it?

Why, when it could nearly kill them all and force them to separate to deal with not one, not two, but three spirits?

They hadn’t been prepared for it, all right? The bastards had been working together, not trying to cancel each other out, but teaming up because that was way more fun. They must’ve all escaped from Hell together, and at least they weren’t cremated or already burned, just buried, but that meant splitting in three to deal with each spirit individually before they could kill again.

It was Sam who figured out that each one had an emblem on their headstone, a bid at “eternal life” or something that had allowed them to return to their home haunt. So they’d taken a heavy instrument each and headed for three separate graveyards.

Dean broke his headstone with a single and solid swing, thanks to the sledgehammer he’d brought, and would’ve lost his head to the ghost if he’d been a second slower. Castiel called a minute later, also signifying success while sounding heavily out of breath. (That was what he got for insisting a plain old hammer would be fine for him.) Dean was about to hang up on him when Castiel’s words caught his attention. “Wait, what?”

“I said, Sam prayed,” Castiel said urgently, and Dean’s stomach plunged to his feet. “He said he needed help urgently. I’m already heading towards the cemetery he took.”

Dean didn’t say anything else, just hung up and took off for the Impala, dialing Sam as he went. _Sam prayed_. _He needed help urgently._ “Answer, dammit,” he muttered.

Sam didn’t answer. It went all the way to voicemail, and Dean hung up and called again.

Six rings. _Hi, you’ve reached Sam. Leave a message._

Shit. Shit shit _shit_.

He nearly slid in the ice and snow when he reached the car and switched out the hammer for a shotgun full of salt. He slid into the driver’s seat and gunned it for Sam’s cemetery, the middle of the three. It took almost six minutes on the slick roads, six minutes too long, six minutes with Sam in need of _urgent help._ He slammed to a halt aimed at the road to the cemetery and realized he’d driven to where he’d dropped Sam, the little footpath, and not the main driving road to the historic cemetery. The path was covered in snow and held a single track of footprint, but otherwise the path itself didn’t look big enough to take the car down, not without possibly breaking something in the car. The iron-wrought gates heralding the cemetery looked too narrow except for people. He parked the car and immediately headed down after the footprints. Definitely his brother’s. “Sam!” he shouted into the cold night air.

Nothing.

“Dean,” and there was Castiel, hurrying forward, his hammer in one hand, flashlight in the other. A trail of blood hung at his hairline, but he waved Dean off. “No, it’s fine, it just got a little close. We need to find Sam.”

Way past time to find his brother. Dean took off down the dirt path as fast as he could, Castiel right behind him. The only sound Dean could hear besides his own pounding heartbeat were his own quick steps, crunching through the snow. What the hell did ‘urgent help’ mean anyway? “Next time, pray _specifically_ ,” he muttered under his breath, but it didn’t abate the panic in his chest.

They burst into the cemetery and Dean frantically searched around with the half-moon shining above him as light. No orange-brown-not-beige coat, no tall figure, no dark hair against the white snow. Just as silent as a tomb, and oh god, not what he needed to think about, because Sam was _fine_. “Sammy!” he bellowed. His breath fogged in the air, but he didn’t think it was from a spirit.

“There,” Castiel said, pointing at the shadowy prints left in the snow with his flashlight, and Dean gave a tight nod before leading the way again. The footprints were easy to follow, at least, and Sam had clearly searched quickly, running a few times if the gait was anything to go by. But then the steps congregated and Dean only realized he was running too when he pulled himself up to a stop in front of a destroyed headstone. The pickaxe lay beside it.

Sam was nowhere to be seen.

Dean spun around wildly, looking for more prints, but they’d ended here, in varying degrees and shapes, a huge random gathering that spoke of Sam having moved quickly and in different places. “Sammy!” he shouted again.

Nothing. Sam was gone.

“Spread out,” Dean said numbly. He pulled his phone out and called Sam again, hoping for a ring, hoping to hear the familiar ringtone, but nothing echoed in the silence. Just two trees, three small mausoleums, a few table tombs, and a lot of headstones. It wasn’t like he should’ve been that hard to find. He had to _be here_.

Castiel headed to the right, immediately searching behind the table tomb nearest him before moving to the mausoleum. Dean swallowed hard and moved to search to the left. No footprints went ahead of him, nothing that indicated where Sam might’ve gone. He hadn’t doubled back, Dean would’ve seen those footprints. Only one set in, so where the hell was his little brother?

“Sammy, please,” he murmured desperately, and realized it was almost like a prayer. His lips curled up into a snarl at the thought, because even though praying brought Sam daily peace it didn’t help Dean at all. The only times he’d ever prayed had been during loss or grief, and Chuck had probably relished each one. He was surprised the asshole hadn’t brought it up. _Occasionally, I do answer a prayer._ When it strengthened his story or whatever. In fact, this was probably right up Chuck’s alley; Sam possibly dead and Dean frantically searching for him.

Dean shut his eyes tight and forced a deep breath out through his nose. Not dead. Sam was _fine_. He just needed to find him, and for some unknown reason, Dean knew he was running out of time.

And, well. Apparently he didn’t just pray when he felt loss or grief: he prayed when he needed his brother, too.

“Please, someone, anyone,” he whispered. “Please, just…help me. Help _Sam_ ,” and the fury that swept through him felt as helpless as the rest of him. “Dammit he’s prayed and been faithful and he has been screwed out of everything, but I’m not going to see him lose his life over some stupid spirit in the middle of New Hampshire. Not now, not after everything, so just…please. Please.”

Silence met his ears. Castiel had probably heard his prayer and it made him turn to look behind him to where Cas was surely tromping through the snow to him, looking nine types of concerned. Great.

The breeze blew, sending Castiel’s coat flying to the side, and the branches of the tree behind him swayed. A flicker of orange caught his eye in the tree, and no. No _way_.

Dean stopped breathing. The tree branches shifted back as the sudden breeze died, and the orange disappeared completely. But he knew what he’d seen.

Castiel frowned, stopped and turned to see where Dean had been looking. “Dean, what-?”

He didn’t wait, he took off, feet almost sliding in the slick snow. The tree didn’t have any leaves left but each one of the thick and many branches were covered in snow. He looked for a foothold and found one easy, putting his foot nearly to his chest in a small hole in order to grab the branch above him. “Dean!” Castiel called, sounding bewildered beyond belief.

It didn’t matter, because Dean knew what he’d seen. He knew what he’d seen, dammit, and he didn’t know how but he’d seen that coat and he knew who it belonged to. He pushed himself up another few branches and wrapped himself around the trunk.

There, sprawled on one of the larger limbs, hidden completely by a multitude of smaller branches, coat flapping slightly in the breeze, was Sam. His eyes were closed in obvious unconsciousness, and there was a gash on one cheek that looked small and easy to mend.

The branch sticking through his abdomen, however, wouldn’t be as easy, and blood was pooling in the snow on the branch beside him.

“Sammy,” he breathed, horrified, and then he shouted below him. “Cas! Get up here! I need help!”

Gingerly he crawled over to Sam and felt for a pulse. Still there, beating fast with the blood loss and slowing by the moment. “Not on my watch,” he muttered. Sam was alive, and everything else could be fixed. _Would_ be fixed.

Branches creaked and Castiel made his appearance. “I need you to heal,” Dean said fiercely. Castiel said nothing, simply stared in shock. “Cas, I know you’re low on juice but you’ve got to do it this time. I need you.”

That seemed to jar Castiel out of whatever weird shock he was in, and he reached beyond Dean to rest a hand on Sam’s side. The branch burnt away to nothing and Sam jerked, a choked cry falling from his lips. He would’ve fallen off the branch if Dean hadn’t caught him. Wide hazel eyes shot over to him, and Dean caught Sam’s hand in his. “Easy, easy,” he soothed, and watched as the panic in Sam’s eyes faded as soon as they caught hold of Dean. “Cas is just healing you, so don’t fall out of the tree, all right?”

Sam blinked. “Tree?” he mumbled.

“I don’t have enough grace for that,” Castiel said dryly, but he sounded taxed. When he pulled his hand back, the branch through Sam’s middle was gone, and all that remained was the bloody shirt. The skin underneath was whole. “So please come down the right way.”

Sam still didn’t look like he was tracking right, so Dean tugged him to sit upright carefully, then began pulling him down. Between him and Cas they got him back on solid ground. Sam stumbled briefly, then shook his head, clearing the last of the cobwebs. “You okay?” Dean still couldn’t help but ask. Because if Cas hadn’t been there, if he hadn’t spotted that damn coat, if Sam hadn’t prayed, if if if-

“Yeah, I guess,” Sam said, but he still sounded puzzled. Just puzzled, nothing different, nothing life-threatening or out of the ordinary. “Again I ask, tree?”

“How about you tell me?!” Dean exploded, and to his credit, all Sam did was raise his eyebrows at him. Dean swallowed and forced his heart to slow down, ignoring the rhythm of _he’s dead he’s dead he’s dead_ that had been beating inside of him. He wasn’t dead. Somehow, for some reason, he was still allowed to have a brother. Sam was okay. His hand went to his mouth to keep the scream in.

A hand rested on his shoulder, and Dean took in another breath. Sam smiled at him, bloody shirt still hanging off of him. “You found me,” he said.

“Always will,” Dean swore, and Sam’s lips turned up more.

“I know.”

Faith and trust that he probably didn’t deserve, but he’d found Sam, gotten him down. Sam was alive. Sam was okay.

“It helped to hear your prayer,” Castiel admitted. “I’m not sure we would’ve found you in time otherwise. I’m glad you did that.”

Dean nodded and Sam didn’t nod, Sam just frowned. “Prayer?”

“You prayed.” There was a frown growing on Castiel’s face now. “You said you needed help, and urgently.”

Sam slowly shook his head. “I might be fuzzy on how the tree happened, but I didn’t pray, Cas. I didn’t have time to pray: I hit the headstone and then something hit me. Then you showed up and saw me in the tree.”

“We didn’t,” Castiel said, even more bewildered now. “Well, I didn’t, Dean did.”

All eyes turned to him, and Dean felt a little fuzzy himself. “The wind blew,” he said, and it sounded weak, sounded as weird as it felt. But the wind had blown and Sam had been there. Sam who hadn’t prayed for help.

If. If. If.

Silence fell between them. Sam was the first to break it, his feet crunching the snow beneath them. He tugged at Dean’s sleeve, pulling him back down the path towards the car, and Dean went. And if he looked over his shoulder at the tree, no one else mentioned it.

* * *

“So.”

Dean glanced up from his glass. No one had argued with him about needing a drink, and the motel had been nicely connected to a small bar built like a tavern. It was brighter than most of the dives they visited, but it was quiet, and there were a few couples tucked into the random booths. They were in a separate room that held the bar top, and the only ones at the bar were him and Sam.

Sam didn’t elaborate. Dean didn’t feel like he really needed to. “Yeah,” he said, and turned back to his glass. He was going to need more whiskey. The bloody shirt that Sam had tossed into the trash was still burned into the back of his brain and going to wait for him when he fell asleep tonight unless he had a few more drinks.

He was a little startled when Sam actually continued. “Um. I think…I think Chuck might’ve lied to us.”

Dean raised an eyebrow. “Lied? You think the ball might’ve…?”

“No, I think he was telling the truth about that.” Sam turned to his own drink, a matching glass to Dean’s, but it was still full. He rolled the glass between his fingers before setting it down on the bar top. “I think he was lying about himself.”

That was definitely going to need more alcohol. He drained his glass and then gave a nod to the bartender. “Himself,” Dean echoed.

“Your amulet didn’t glow, right?”

No, Dean would’ve noticed that. “No. Why?”

“So Chuck didn’t show tonight?”

“No, _why_?”

Sam sighed and turned to Dean fully. “Dean, I didn’t pray for Cas. You guys showed up and the breeze happened to blow just right so you found me right before I could’ve bled out.”

Yeah, this wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have. Even with the fresh glass in front of him, it wasn’t enough to wash away the image of Sam, white as the snow, branch through his gut. There wasn’t enough alcohol in the entire world. “You got a point?” Dean snapped.

Sam just gazed at him, open and honest. “Yeah. That there was something helping you tonight. And it wasn’t Chuck.”

It took a minute to move past the image of Sam for his words to sink in. “Wait, wait, _wait_ ,” and he couldn’t seriously be suggesting what he thought he was. “You think-“

“That Chuck might be writing our futures out, but that there might be something else at play? Some _one_? …Yeah,” and Sam nodded. “Yeah, I do.”

Dean stared, then turned and downed Sam’s glass since the asshole wasn’t drinking it. “Think about it,” Sam said earnestly. “I didn’t pray, I _know_ I didn’t. But somehow Cas picks up that I need help? And you just happened to see me? And find me in time?” He paused, and Dean knew what he’d say and had no time to brace himself. “And you saw me after you prayed for help?”

Dean shook his head but couldn’t say anything. He didn’t have that sort of faith, to think there was still something good out there, that maybe there was a higher being than Chuck, that maybe someone had been willing to help him find Sam. He just couldn’t.

…But he had found Sam. And even Chuck admitted that every time he wrote out their path, they changed it. That they kept staying together, fighting for each other. That somehow, they defied Chuck’s orders.

_I believe in us._

Sam sat beside him, living and breathing proof that Dean wouldn’t give up on him. And Dean sat there, absolutely proof that Sam had never given up on him. Even when nothing else stood by them, they stood by each other.

Maybe someone else did too.

Dean took a breath in. “Maybe,” he said, and Sam blinked, startled by his answer. “But maybe I’ll just always come for you.”

It’d been a while since he’d seen Sam honest to goodness smile like that. The full one that made something inside of Dean relax because his kid was happy. This was more than happy, though, this was hope, the thing that Chuck had killed briefly but hadn’t been able to snuff out for good.

 _And he won’t,_ something inside of him said, _not as long as you’re here._

That sounded like the sort of faith Dean could keep.

Another pull of whiskey suddenly wasn’t what he wanted most. “Come on,” he said, and he tugged Sam off his stool. Sam went easily and followed him to the door, though he made a confused face. “I want pizza.”

“It’s almost midnight.”

“Pizza places are always open. I want pizza.”

“Okay,” Sam said amicably, and when he looked up, Sam was still smiling at him. “You know what kind Cas likes these days?”

Any kind. “I’ll figure it out.”

“Maybe they sell hats, too. You need a new hat. Bet I could find a pink one for you.”

The laugh Dean let out was probably way too big, filled with too much relief and stress, but it only bolstered him all the more. Because his kid was there and maybe good things could still happen to good people.

They headed out into the snow, shoulder to shoulder, side by side, Sam breathing, and Dean willing to pray again if it meant he got to keep this.


End file.
